Torres urges more comments on draft EIS

Acting governor Ralph DLG. Torres is urging CNMI residents to submit more comments on the draft environmental impact statement issued by the U.S. military.

This, after Dentons US LLP and its partner Environmental Science Associates released a list of its initial findings on the draft EIS.

Dentons has been hired by the CNMI government to review the impact statements and—if necessary—give recommendations to the government.

“The document is the result of numerous discussions between [the Inos] administration and Dentons following several reads of the draft EIS and seeing again and again that the Department of the Navy failed to comply with the NEPA regulations in their draft EIS,” Torres said.

The official said the CNMI “needed a comprehensive list of these inadequacies and Dentons assisted in the production of this document.”

“This is an overview of the inadequacies, but in speaking to the folks in our departments working on issue-specific comments, the number of concerns that need to be seriously addressed by the Navy is quite large,” he said.

Torres said it is his “hope that more and more residents of the CNMI would also take a close look at what is being proposed and submit whatever concerns or comments they have to the Navy so that they can be heard and taken into consideration.”

The deadline for the comment submission has been moved to Aug. 18, after the Department of Defense agreed to give an extension.

The CNMI public is being encouraged to visit www.cnmieis.org if they want more information on the military joint training plan or on how to submit comments.

Initial findings
In its initial report, Dentons again highlighted that the impact statement document “fails to meet even the most basic requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.”

The draft EIS also fails to provide a meaningful and objective evaluation of alternatives to the Navy’s proposed project, and fails to identify and analyze the environmental impacts of the project in an accurate, complete fashion.

The Dentons initial report said the draft EIS also “fails to address mitigation that would avoid or minimize the impacts of the project, even where such mitigation is obvious, effective, and financially-feasible.”

“In preparing the draft EIS, the Navy failed to promote meaningful public engagement and proceeded without coordination or compliance with other requirements of federal and CNMI law,” the initial report further said.